Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation, has confirmed that Firefox users will soon be able to completely disable all AI features within the browser. That’s good news for the community, tired of having AI pushed down their throats.
https://cybernews.com/ai-news/mozilla-firefox-ai-kill-switch/
Yeah, I saw that Mastodon thread too.
Its funny to see Mozilla be the arsonist and the firefighter. Guess that’s what 2000 people there gets you.
At-least glad this is the case.
Official article from Mozilla: Mozilla’s next chapter: Building the world’s most trusted software company
I’ve been wondering if Firefox would still be a recommendation on this website at this point. Because it seems to me that this new direction goes against the principles of online privacy. I’m guessing that Firefox will become like Brave in a way: full of disservices and anti-features that I don’t use and turn off. I use the browser though because there is nothing else. Maybe Firefox will be the same…
Also, I’m worried that these changes to the browser will negatively impact forks like Mullvad, Tor, etc. I’ve been scouting for alternatives and the only one that could replace Firefox is Ladybird. However, Ladybird is still in development and super fingerprintable which is a shame but in a few years it could potentially become a robust privacy-friendly browser.
Will PG keep it as a recommendation? Do you think the Tor Project will be able to cope and remove all the dangerous features or will they die because of the massive work it requires to clean this up?
There are other options if you didn’t know. Mullvad Browser, Orion, Helium, Tor browser are all legitimate web browsers without any AI in them. They all have their use cases and may not fit everyone’s needs but you should still consider them if you’re open to trying something new.
Also, nothing has happened yet. Let it all be implemented and see how it is. I’m sure the derivatives of FF will easily be abe to remove this.
This seems to be a case where there is a schism between Firefox devs and the management. After all, it was first announced on the Dev account. The devs realized that forcing AI onto people had massively backfired. Management seems to have listened. That’s great.
Firefox needs core enthusiast users to survive.
No. It only needs that Google money. It’s more in Google’s interest for Mozilla to survive than Mozilla themselves. It’s a weird world.
You don’t, but most people actually do. I’m not sure what’s the future for Firefox, but I’ve seen only critique and rage in last few days, mostly due to these AI announcements. And in my online bubble, people and communities I follow, most of people don’t use and don’t like AI. But most of the people around me use AI every day, ChatGPT mostly. My family members, my friends, my colleagues, aquantances, forum members. They don’t care about results (consider it good), about servers and RAM shortages, about privacy, about authors’ rights. It’s the same 90% of people who use Windows, Gmail, Google Search, Facebook and their products and of course Google Chrome, maybe Edge. So if Firefox, or any other company wants to get new users from that userbase, they must (or should) offer them the same features. If there’s an (easy) way to disable/change these “anti-features”, there is no real reason for power users to complain.
Google ain’t going to pay Mozilla if they got 0 users.
Yes they will. Its literally in their interest.
That’s good that Firefox AI can be disabled at least. However, how can I verify that it isn’t still running in the background when I have it disabled? I am still of the opinion that AI features shouldn’t be in the code or the binary of Firefox itself and should be separated out, available as an optional add-on for users that explicitly want AI in their browser.
I agree with you, sort of. However, the problem is Firefox’s user base is extremely small as it is already, so it isn’t in Mozilla’s best interest in angering the very few users that they have left. Yet, Mozilla’s continued delusional decisions are going so far now to the point that it is getting extremely hard for even the most diehard of Firefox/Gecko loyalists to justify using Firefox over other competitors that have objectively better experiences. Instead of making decisions of trying to differentiate themselves from others in the browser industry to win users back, they are instead doubling down on following the rest of the industry in cramming AI into places where it is not necessary. Even Vivaldi, being a browser known for catering to power users with loads of features and customization options, has rejected browser-integrated AI and has publically spoken against it in their blog posts. Therefore, Mozilla in my eyes is now no different than the other Big Tech browser companies in implementing AI everywhere and everything they possibly can. I use ChatGPT, Claude, etc. a lot myself, but even I personally draw a hard line with AI when it starts becoming embedded into the browsers and operating systems that I use every day. Let me reiterate again that I do not care if they can be “disabled”. I don’t want embedded AI at all.
For me, it not so much the addition of the tools that has repelled me away (although it’s obviously a factor), it’s just that my trust in Mozilla has completely collapsed after this. They can say all they want about kill switches or opt-outs, but now I don’t believe our values are aligned anymore. So now I’m at the point where I’d need to check the config after every update, monitor tracking and telemetry, etc, and I don’t really want to do all of that.
I do not believe that they’ve spent resources that they don’t have into a feature they’re not going to try to push on me to justify the expenditure. Maybe they will, but since I no longer trust them, I’m not giving them the chance.